Social distancing has been going on for a few weeks now that the Coronavirus started to get bigger and spread in more and more places. But homeless people can't afford social distance because they have no home or nowhere to go to isolate themselves so that leaves us with thousands of homeless individuals who are still sleeping on the streets in NYC. As COVID-19 cases rise throughout the city, the more homeless people are diagnosed with the deadly virus.
There have been 99 confirmed cases of homeless people testing positive for coronavirus in 59 homeless shelters as of March 30,2020. NYC is doing a street sweep, moving homeless people off of locations where they had to set up shelter to a homeless shelter. But the Center for Disease Control says that “unless individual housing units are available, do not clear encampments during community spread of COVID-19. Clearing encampments can cause people to disperse throughout the community and break connections with service providers. This increases the potential for infectious disease spread.” But the Department of Social Services says that this experts' guidance applies to homeless tent cities and only if no other housing is available.
Homeless people are being put in shelters, but the shelters are not clean. There hasn't been an increase in cleaning and the people have not been given hand sanitizer or mask. Shelters seem to be doing everything they can but without protective gear, the homeless will remain at risk. The department of health said that “clients who have symptoms do not remain on-site and there is a “clear protocol” for immediately connecting symptomatic clients to care, so they are promptly transported either to the hospital as needed or to isolation for monitoring or recovery.
I feel like there's nothing missing from the government's response to homeless people because they have allowed the homeless and the shelter population to grow and now mostly everyone of those people are at risk of getting the virus, So what more can they really do, because they can't sweep every homeless person off the street in NYC. Things we can do to help the homeless during this crisis is to give out food,water,vitamins,hand sanitizer,gloves and face masks to them.
By Star
Sources: